


i felt it shelter to speak to you

by goldheartedsky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Anal Sex, Art in Fic, BAMF Peggy Carter, F/M, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Pining, Mutually Unrequited, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Non-Serum Bucky Barnes, Oral Sex, Secret Admirer, Steve and Bucky as nurses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 05:33:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15901899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldheartedsky/pseuds/goldheartedsky
Summary: “What is that!?”He nearly jumps out of his skin when Natasha gasps next to his ear, eyes wide as she gets a glimpse at the card. Bucky shoves it back in the envelope and says, “It’s nothing, Nat. I don’t even think it’s for me.”She snatches the envelope from his hand and turns it over. “It’s got your name on it, dumbass.”When Bucky Barnes finds the first anonymous note from a secret admirer, his life as an ER nurse sets itself on a course that seems predetermined by fate. But when he begins to fall in love with Steve Rogers, the choice between what’s real and destiny may end up tearing his soul apart.(Now with art!)





	i felt it shelter to speak to you

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short little ficlet but turned into an almost 15k monster, which is amazing because I never write fluff. I was just so inspired by the idea of everyone in the MCU working in a hospital with Bucky and Steve as nurses. All quotes are attributed to the writers except the bridge one, which is by the fabulous Richard Siken.
> 
> Title from an Emily Dickenson letter.
> 
> Edit 6/29/2019: I commissioned a piece from the amazing [Kayaczek](https://kayaczek.tumblr.com) which is at the bottom of the piece. It’s absolutely amazing and I’ve been internally screaming ever since I got the WIP.

There are things he hates about his job: long shifts, unruly patients, the fact that his feet ache like a bitch when he goes home.

But the things he loves about his job outweigh the bad: the kids that come in, his coworkers, the hospital director, and, now, the letter sitting in the bottom of his locker.

His day starts off relatively normal, he gets up at 3pm, showers, shoves a microwave breakfast sandwich in his mouth as he throws on his scrubs and tennis shoes. It’s warm for once outside, even for early April, and he relishes the spring air on his face. He walks the half hour to the hospital, dodging a couple cars but, hey, it’s Brooklyn. Natasha is waiting in the break room with his coffee, which he downs quickly.

“Looks like its you, me, and Sharon with Bruce tonight,” Nat says, tipping her head toward the schedule. “You’re stuck on triage, Barnes.”

Groaning, Bucky says, “Ugh, I hate triage. If I have to tell one more mom that her fourteen year old’s 102 degree fever doesn’t warrant a trip to the emergency room, I’m going to lose my shit. I despise patients like that.”

“But they _love_ you,” she smirks. She grabs his cheeks with one of her hands, squeezing them together as she says, “So _pretty_.”

“Not pretty enough to get a date around here,” he laughs. “Nobody wants to date a broke ass nurse with a studio apartment that works night shifts. May be ‘ _so pretty_ ’ but definitely not a catch.”

“Oh stop it,” Natasha says, “you’re cute, you’re smart, you’ve got a rocking body, and you’re nice, which is a short supply in men nowadays.”

“ _Girls_ want nice, men just want somebody to fuck them into a wall.”

“No, that’s just the men you end up meeting in that shitty bar you go to. No decent man is going to be drinking at 8am in the morning,” she says as she tosses her own empty cup into the trash. “You need to branch out. Go to a bookstore or something. I’m sure you’ll find some nice little nerd for you to talk about French poetry and shit. You can get a dog or something. It’ll be cute.”

Bucky wants to make a snappy quip back, but, honestly, everything Natasha thinks he deserves sounds like a far away dream for him. Like he can see it on the horizon, edges glowing, just out of focus. So he settles with just smiling and unlocking his locker. He freezes when he sees a red envelope sitting on top of his work shoes with his name on it. Setting his backpack on the floor, he carefully slides a finger into the flap, tearing the paper with his skin. Pulling out a small white card, Bucky reads the words carefully written in elegant script.

 _They say we are asleep until we fall in love. And I’m so ready to wake up now._  
_-S_

“What is _that_!?”

He nearly jumps out of his skin when Natasha gasps next to his ear, eyes wide as she gets a glimpse at the card. Bucky shoves it back in the envelope and says, “It’s nothing, Nat. I don’t even think it’s for me.”

She snatches the envelope from his hand and turns it over. “It’s got your name on it, dumbass.” She pulls the card out and skims it quickly. “There are exactly nine other people in the ER whose name starts with an S, not to mention anyone else in the hospital who’s been crushing on you. But it’s Tolstoy, so we know they’re well read...”

“ _You’ve_ read Tolstoy?”

“I’m Russian, _of course_ I’ve read Tolstoy.”

Bucky grabs the card back and sighs. “Look at this handwriting though. It’s clearly a woman. And, you know, the whole boobs and vagina thing just doesn’t really do it for me,” he says, shoving the card back in his locker and grabs his shoes. Throwing his backpack and tennis shoes in, he slams the metal door, trying to put the envelope and his secret admirer out of his mind.

“Whoever it is, I hope they’re a hottie,” Nat says, nudging him with her elbow. “You haven’t gotten laid in, like, two years. You gotta bang it out with someone soon.”

He just chuckles and clips his badge on, heading out of the break room. He passes the short blond nurse who’s heading the opposite direction and gives him a smile. The blond smiles back tiredly, clearly getting off his shift for the night. Bucky can hear the shorter man yawn, and catches a glimpse of him before the other man disappears into the lockers.

Over the next twelve hours, he deals with six sprained ankles, a bad case of asthma in a 90 year old woman, two broken noses, and a man who had nearly sliced his thumb off with a a knife. He shoves down an entire bowl of pasta in five minutes at the cafeteria around 2am and can’t stop thinking about the note, as much as he wants to.

He slips out of triage and out of the hospital before Natasha can get to him because he really doesn’t want any more prying into his personal life.

But Bucky catches himself staring at his name, loving inscribed on the deep red envelope and his heart can’t help but sing.

There’s another envelope the next day.

 _Love recognizes no barriers._  
_It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope._  
_-S_

He hides this one in the pocket of his scrubs, his face turning a matching shade of crimson the entire day. Natasha gives him suspicious looks when he fumbles two blood draws in a row after almost tripping over an abandoned wheelchair.

“What the hell is going on with you tonight?” she hisses as they fill out paperwork.

“It’s nothing.”

She grabs the pen out of his hands and narrows her eyes at him. Bucky tries to play it cool but Nat sees right through him. “You got another note, _didn’t_ you!”

He sighs and pulls it out of his pocket. Same red envelope, same elegant script. He hands it over to his friend’s grabby fingers and says, “It’s a Maya Angelou quote. I don’t know how his person knew that I’ve read every word she’s published. It’s kind of creepy.”

Natasha thinks for a second before she says, “You were reading one of her books before your shift over Christmas. Maybe they saw you reading it.”

Maybe.

He’s off for the next three days and tries to keep busy, but ends up just wandering around the neighborhood late one night. That was the hardest part of working the graveyard shift at the hospital was, when Bucky actually had time off, the only thing open was the bodega and Mr. Kowalski’s Bookshop. The old man had been in business for almost 60 years and kept the store open til midnight for late night workers and insomniacs like himself.

“Hey James,” the elderly man greets him when the bell rings as he open the door.

“Hey Mr. Kowalski,” Bucky waves, ducking through the rows of books. He runs his fingers over the spines, just browsing. He knows that he could ask Mr. Kowalski if he knew of any particularly voracious readers that may live in the neighborhood, but there’s no guarantee that his admirer even lives in the neighborhood, even if they work at the hospital.

He’s so engrossed in his thoughts that he bumps into someone as he rounds the shelf. The man drops four of his books, muttering, “What the fuck, man?”

Bucky grabs them off the floor, apologizing quickly, “Shit, sorry, I don’t know what I was trying to-” He looks up to see the blond nurse from the morning shift staring down at him, one eyebrow raised. “Oh... hey! It’s you.”

The blond holds out a hand and Bucky grabs it, pulling himself up. The other man stares at their hands and says, “Umm... I was actually waiting for my books, but...”

Bucky lets go of the shorter man’s hand and turns about six shades pinker. “Fuck, sorry, I-”

The man lets out a wheezy laugh and Bucky’s going to die right here in the bookstore. “What are you apologizing again for? You already fumbled the first one. The second one wasn’t any better,” he says, smirk spreading over his thin face. Bucky knows he must look absolutely mortified because the other man kicks his toe gently and says, “But it’s fine. Hey, you work at the hospital, right? I thought I recognized you.”

He nods, trying to force the color from his face back down in his body. “Yeah, I’m on graveyard shift.”

“ _That’s_ why I never see you. I’m strictly day shift unless someone fucks the schedule up bad.”

Bucky tries to lean smoothly against the bookshelf but has to catch himself when it starts to lean under his weight. The blond laughs again, a toothy grin shining like the sun in the dim lights, and _oh no_.

“What’s your name? Since I never see you at work.”

His mind goes blank as he stumbles over his words. “James... Barnes? Uh, but my friends call me Bucky, at least they would if I had any friends.”

There’s that eyebrow raise that makes his palms sweat, as the man asks quietly, “Did you just quote Disney’s _Hercules_ at me? Are you _trying_ to make me fall in love with you, Bucky Barnes?”

His heart pounds in his throat as he shoves the books into the blond’s chest, stuttering, “I-I have to go.” Everything goes on autopilot as he stumbles back, catching a rack of postcards before it tips completely. The blond watches him run out, bemused expression on his face. Bucky runs the entire way back to his apartment, head down, hoping no one else sees his burning cheeks.

He slams his fist on the door when he’s finally in the safety of his apartment and groans, “What the fuck is _wrong_ with me?!”

Bucky tosses and turns all night, trying to get the blond out of his head.

When he’s back at work, he gets there early, hoping to see the blond at the end of his shift, but he’s not there. But what there are, are envelopes. He finds not one, not two, but three red envelopes sitting on his shoes, just waiting for him.

_You should be kissed, often, and by someone who knows how.  
-S_

_I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.  
-S_

_You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.  
-S_

He recognizes the first one from _Gone with the Wind_ , but doesn’t recognize the other two. He’s about to pull out his phone to google the quotes when he hears that familiar British lilt, “Chop chop, James. Patients do not heal themselves; we don’t pay you to stand around!”

Bucky rolls his eyes and throws the envelopes and his phone into his locker and slams it shut. “No, you don’t.” He salutes her cheekily as he says, “Ready for duty, Margaret.”

She looks at him stonily, her perfectly lipsticked mouth pressed tight as she says, “And how many times must we go over this, it’s _Peggy_ , not Margaret.”

“And how many times must we go over this,” he mimics playfully. “It’s Bucky, not James.”

Peggy crosses her arms over her white coat and narrows her eyes at him. It’s tense for almost a minute and Bucky’s starting to think he’s gone too far this time, but, finally, Peggy cracks a thin grin and winks at him. “Let’s go. We’re late enough as is.”

It’s a slow night in the ER until an extremely pregnant woman comes in thinking she had kidney stones again and pops a baby out into his gloves as he’s screaming for help from the doctors. Peggy takes over from him, pushing the shellshocked nurse out of the way as she says, “Heavens sake, it’s just a baby.” Bucky waves dazedly as the mom and her new baby, Harrison James Rothson, travel up to the OB ward.

The middle aged doctor pulls her gloves off and tosses them in the trash, saying, “Excellent work; you caught that baby like a professional.”

Bucky blinks back to reality and says, “I never want to do that again in my entire life. I got into emergency medicine specifically so I never have to deal with ‘ _catching babies_.’”

She claps a hand on his shoulder and says, “Take an extra hour for lunch. You’ve earned it.”

Bucky tucks himself in the corner of the break room, and reads through the notes again. The last one seems to sew it’s way into his chest.

_So that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me._

_The ruin of me._

He googles the second and third cards, and finds they’re from Gabriel García Márquez’s _Love in the Time of Cholera_ and Dickens’s _Our Mutual Friend_. Bucky had always found Dickens too dry, too excessively monotonous, but this person had found the only beautiful passage. Found it just for him. Here was this person who is clearly in love with him and he knows nothing about him.

“I wonder...” he murmurs to himself.

He snatches an intake form from the reception desk and scribbles carefully on the back.

 _If you are not too long_  
_I will wait here for you all my life  
-B_

He folds it up carefully and wedges it in the vent of his locker, just the corner sticking to out. It stays there through the rest of his shift and when Bucky leaves for home. He thinks about the person who has been sending him the letters pulling it out with careful fingers, reading the words from Oscar Wilde he’s scrawled. Reading them in some quiet corner, eyes dark.

When he calls Natasha that night, she reacts exactly how he knew she would. “You’re insane, Barnes.”

“How is it any more crazy than this person sending me these envelopes?” he asks, legs swinging over the edge of the fire escape.

“Actually, you’re right. Maybe this person is your soulmate because you’re _both_ insane,” Nat says. “And you’re both super mega ultra nerds. Why can’t you just bang in the supply closet like Sam and I did? It’s way less time intensive.”

Bucky laughs, his voice echoing off the brick buildings in the alley. “This is romance, Natasha. Romance doesn’t come from fucking a physical therapist in a closet.”

“We’re getting _married_ , Bucky,” she says dramatically, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“No, you’re not.”

She chuckles and Bucky can hear small children screaming in the background. There’s some scuffling before Natasha shouts in the background, phone muffled by her hand, “Lilenka, prekratite!”

“Barton got you on kid duty tonight?” he asks when he can tell Natasha has returned.

“They’re basically my kids too, at this point. I was in on the delivery for every single one of them before I transferred to the ER. If you ever want to see a neurologist faint, take him to a live birth. I thought Clint was gonna drop when Cooper popped out.”

“To be fair, I almost did the same today when we had our first accidental birth in Bed 18.”

“You caught a baby today?!” Natasha exclaims excitedly. “Jealous!”

“I would have absolutely let you catch that baby, Nat, but _somebody_ asked for the day off, so _I_ got the baby named after me. Just the middle name but, still, it was cute.”

He can hear the other woman huff on the other end before snapping, “You lucky bastard. If I didn’t love you idiots in the ER so much I’d go back to maternity in a heartbeat, but I guess you’re stuck with me until the foreseeable future.” And Bucky smiles because, god, if it wasn’t for Natasha, graveyard would have gone back to the hell they used to be. Natasha tried to be a hardass like Peggy, but they were both complete softies on the inside, once they trusted you.

There’s another crash in the background of Nat’s end and Bucky mutters, “I’ll let you go discipline your kids.”

The last thing he hears, before the line goes dead, is Natasha screaming in Russian, trying to shut everyone up.

He lays in bed, eyes shut, carefully penned lines curling around him like a sinking lullaby. _Attraction which I have resisted in vain, which overmasters me._ He snakes his hand down his underwear, wrapping his fingers around his hardening cock. It only takes a couple of strokes before he’s fully hard, straining into his hand. _You could draw me to any exposure and disgrace._ His breath hitches when he twists his fist, hips arching down into the bed. There is no face, no body, only words, as he comes quickly, gasping into the cool air from the open window.

_So that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me._

Bucky stares at the ceiling for hours, finally falling asleep as the sun rises over the horizon, bathing him in gold.

And of course, like the dumbass he is, he forgets to set an alarm. He hops in a cab _horrifically_ late, and hopes it’s Bruce on the floor tonight, not Peggy. Peggy will absolutely _murder_ him, Bruce would likely just hand him a coffee and tell him to get to work.

The door to the cab is open before it even stops, Bucky throwing the driver a $20 as he races out of the car. He trips up the steps and catches his knee on the top edge, swearing under his breath. But, just as he’s about to get up and rip open the door, he catches glimpse of a familiar face standing over him.

“It’s you.”

The blond raises both of his eyebrows at him and chuckles. “ _You_ look like you’re late,” he says, smirk pulling at his delicate features. “You better get off your knees. But...” There’s a dark glimmer in the petite man’s eyes that make his dick twitch, just a hair.

Bucky looks up at him and asks, “Who’s the attending on the floor tonight? Please tell me it’s Banner.”

He catches a glimpse at the badge hanging from the man’s hip. _Steven Rogers_.

Steven (Steve, maybe?) holds out his hand, this time clearly waiting for his. He pulls Bucky to his feet and leans in, murmuring quietly, “You’ll just have to find out for yourself, won’t you?” And Bucky doesn’t get a little hard, he really doesn’t.

But he remembers that he’s forty-five minutes late and rushes into the hospital the moment Steven pulls away, running down the corridors. He busts into the ER, breathing heavily and waves to Wanda at the front desk. She gives him a look but buzzes him back, Bucky already hopping out of his tennis shoes.

“Where the hell were you?” Natasha hisses as he runs into the break room, tossing his backpack in with his shoes. He grabs his work shoes and shoves his feet into them before running out on the floor.

“Is it Bruce or Peggy?” he asks, a hint of fear in his voice.

“Bruce but-”

“Oh thank god,” he breathes in relief.

“But, he’s in a really bad mood today, so I would just try and stay out of his way, especially coming in late like that. You know Bruce, you _really_ don’t want to see him angry,” she says as they split up down the halls.

Bucky doesn’t have time to breathe, eat, or even think about anything but the dozens of patients that come flooding in the moment he arrives. They end up calling in nurses from the maternity ward to help, and Natasha commands her flock of former colleagues like she’s on the battlefield. It’s nearly 4:45am before he gets a chance to sit down, face down on the break room table.

There’s a rustling of paper and some giggling that sounds too familiar to be anything but suspicious.

“Who do you think it is?” a low voice asks and, _oh god_ , the Maximoffs.

“I don’t know, but they’re _clearly_ in love with each other,” Wanda replies, her accent instantly recognizable. Bucky raises his head off the table and stares at the twins standing by the lockers, a familiar red paper in their hands.

“Hey!” he shouts, scrambling up out of his chair. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, going through my shit?”

Wanda snatches the card from her brother and holds it to her chest dramatically. “You pierce my soul,” she says theatrically, feigning heartache. “I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late.” Bucky snatches the letter from her and the two siblings laugh together. “If you don’t want your secrets being told, don’t leave them on the ground. But, good _god_ , who is writing such sappy words to you?”

He turns a deep shade of pink as he shoves the envelope and card into his pocket. “It’s nobody. I don’t know who it is.”

“Oooh,” Pietro croons, “he has a secret admirer.” He turns to his sister and says, “The note was signed ‘-S.’ I bet it is tall blonde nurse, Sharon.”

Wanda shakes her head and crosses her arms, motioning to Bucky with one of her fingers. “She knows this one is not interested in women. And she is not interested in men, so I think it would be an odd match.”

Bucky shoos them away, muttering, “You weirdos can figure it out later. I’m sure you have better things to do than pry into my personal life.” The twins share a mischievous look and dart out of the break room, whispering to themselves. Bucky runs a hand through his hair and sighs, leaning against a row of lockers. He finally gets the chance to pull the card back out of his pocket and read the words on it.

 _I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach._  
_You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.  
-S_

Jane Austen’s _Persuasion_. Maybe Natasha was right, maybe it was a woman. _He’s_ read all of Jane Austen’s books at least twelve times each but he at least had the excuse of having three younger sisters begging him to read it to them just one more time.

_I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach._

He wonders if he’ll ever meet this person and, for a fleeting second, Bucky wonders if it’s Steven. It would make sense, they’re never on the same shift, and there was clearly some chemistry between the two of them whenever they happen to run into each other that maybe had a little more predetermined history than he realized.

At the end of his lunch break, he leans smoothly on the nurse’s station, “My sweet Maria, I am in a life or death situation and need a favor from you.”

The brunette looks up at him, unimpressed. “What?” she deadpans.

“There’s a nurse that works the day shift, just left before I showed up. Short, skinny, blond. I think his name is Steven? Do you have any of the intake forms he’s filled out? I just want to see what his handwriting looks like.”

Maria sighs and rolls her eyes as she begins digging in the files in the bottom drawer, pulling one out to check the signature on the form. “This is his,” she says. “And it’s Steve, not Steven.”

Bucky stares at the chicken scratch on the intake form and there is no way that Steve could be the one writing the notes in his locker. It looks like a drunk seven year old scribbling an overdue essay. He hands it back to Maria and sighs dejectedly. There goes his only good lead he’s had. “Thanks.”

She narrows her eyes curiously. “Why did you want to see his handwriting?”

He pulls the card out of his pocket and hands it to her. “I’ve been getting these notes in my locker and thought it might be him.”

Maria laughs when she sees the note. “ _Definitely_ not. _I_ can barely read his handwriting and I’ve been working in the ER for 15 years.” She takes a closer look, studying the neat script. “The closest I could think of is Peggy Carter, but it doesn’t look like this. She’s just the most legible,” she says, handing it back. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s writing, to be honest. And I see everyone’s paperwork come through the desk. Sorry.”

Bucky shrugs, muttering, “It’s fine. Thanks anyway.”

He writes his next note carefully, hoping, pleading, that it will get this person to reveal their face, their name, anything to give him a hint of who it could be. He pulls from Victor Hugo and knows his bookworm admirer has read _Les Misérables_.

_The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.  
-B_

It goes exactly the same place, folded into a small triangle and wedged in the vent of his locker.

When Bucky dreams that night, the picture of fingers unfolding his words is less clear, more hazy, like he’s watching it happen a mile away in the rain.

He wakes up early this time, hoping to catch Steve before work, but he’s not there and, when Bucky checks the schedules, he’s not even going to be here for a week. Well, if the notes stopped this week, then it’s absolutely Steve, and if they continue being placed in his locker, then he has to stop getting his hopes up.

The next day, he gets another envelope and his heart skips a beat.

_If you find me not within you, you will never find me. For I have been with you from the beginning of me.  
-S_

Rumi.

On their lunch break, Natasha pulls out a list of possible suspects in the ER and surrounding departments, and there are exactly 8. They cross out 5 names and are left with Scott Lang, the ex-con orderly, Sue Storm, one of the ER’s radiologists, and Shuri, resident child genius of the hospital. They look at the list, stumped.

“Can we take Shuri off the list, please? She’s like, 17,” Bucky says, shuddering. “Also, I’m not a science person, and I don’t think she’s the type to recite poetry and remember all the quotes from the books that have been in the notes.”

Nat sighs and crosses her name off the list. “You’re right. I asked her once what her favorite book was and she said _Chaos and Complexity in Astrophysics_. What a nerd.”

Scott Lang and Sue Storm. _Huh_.

“Scott’s not bad, he’s got the whole ‘Hot Single Dad’ thing going for him,” Nat says, nudging him with her elbow. “Plus, he did like, eight years in prison. You’re _totally_ into bad boys, don’t think I don’t know.

Bucky scoffs, rolling his eyes. “I am not into bad boys. At least not anymore. I don’t think I’m Scott’s type though.”

“Scott Lang is super nice and a great dad, but he will fuck anything that lets him. Scott Lang would fuck a pineapple if it gave consent.” She takes a second look at their list and gasps, grabbing his arm. “What if it’s not Sue Storm, but _Johnny_?”

He laughs hard enough for tears to form in his eyes. “Johnny Storm, ‘ _I’m going to fuck my one night stands on the PT tables_ ’ Johnny Storm? The one person in this hospital who is so painfully heterosexual that he called Sam a homo for trying to hug him? Yeah, he’s totally the one to write little gay me secret love notes from 18th century novels. I don’t think he’s read anything that doesn’t have naked women in it.”

“You’re right. You have to admit, he’s _kinda_ hot though.”

“In like a ‘ _dumb jock I want to mow my lawn_ ’ kind of way. But for lasting romance? No thank you,” he says shoving the list away. “I’m never going to find out who this is. I’ll just be pining over some random person until the day I die.”

“Oh stop it,” Natasha says. “Why don’t you just write a note saying you want to meet. That’s how you nerds seem to be doing it right now.”

Bucky grumbles, and grabs one of Natasha’s notepad pages. He thinks for a second, before pulling his favorite lines from Mirza Sharafat Hussain Beign’s _Letters In Grief_. His mom had sent it to him after his first bad breakup in college and he had spent the next week sobbing into its pages.

 _Your heart and my heart are old mates._  
_They talk, but they never speak, as they speak in holy silence._  
_They beat, they never count, as they beat faster, more faster, as we meet.  
-B_

Natasha puts her hand on his as he begins to fold it up. She looks at him gently, the sarcasm gone from her voice as she asks, “You really like this person, don’t you? You’re falling in love?”

He nods, folding the note up quickly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

Bucky finds himself off work for the next two days and takes the chance to return his terribly late library books. He hands $40 to the librarian at the front desk and promises it’ll never happen again. Wandering through the rows of books, he picks out a couple that Rebby had suggested he read and knows, if he didn’t take his sister’s advice, there would be hell to pay.

He freezes when he sees a familiar head of hair crouched down in the historical fiction.

“You’ve got to be _kidding_ me,” he mutters to himself. Bucky approaches warily but stops when his foot lands on a particularly squeaky part of the floor. He turns about three shades of pink as Steve looks up at him. “Oh hey,” he says, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. “It’s you.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at him and says, “Bucky Barnes, are you stalking me?”

He holds up the three books in his hand and says, “Just getting more books, I swear. What are you doing here?”

“What do people usually do in a library?”

‘ _Great, good job, you really fucked that one up,_ ’ he thinks to himself. Bucky swallows thickly and says, “What are you reading? Anything good?”

Steve stands up, tucking his three books under his arm. “Lisa Tuttle, Ursula LeGuin, Oscar Wilde. Nothing special?” he offers, small smile crossing his soft looking pink lips. And Bucky doesn’t think about the possibility of kissing him right here in the stacks, he doesn’t.

“I love Oscar Wilde. _The Importance of Being Earnest_ is my favorite play.”

The smile on Steve’s face widens and Bucky can see a slight twinkle in his eye. “You’ve got good taste.”

A bell tolls over the loud speakers as a voice says, “The library will be closing in ten minutes.”

The blond jerks his thumb towards the front desk, saying, “Well, I gotta go. Maybe-”

“I was going to go get food after this,” he blurts, interrupting the other man. “There’s a really good Jamaican place about four blocks from here that’s open late. They have really good oxtail and beans.” Steve watches him, patiently amused as he rambles. “Maybe you want to go with me? My treat?”

The shorter man chuckles and looks up at him, blue eyes dark as he says, “I never say no to a free meal.”

Mama T’s is mostly empty by the time they get there, so Bucky sits them in the best table, the one right underneath the kitchen opening. There, they can bask in the delicious aroma of spices, cooking rice, and roasting meat and have a private conversation. Steve sits catty corner from him and stretches his legs under the table, propped up on the chair next to him and Bucky can’t help but smile.

“So how long have you been working at the hospital? Has it always been night shifts?” Steve asks after they order, crossing his thin arms over his chest.

Bucky shrugs, picking at his nails. “It’s been almost three years I think? I was at Brookdale before getting the job here. It’s tough working nights but everyone on that shift makes it a hell of a lot easier.”

“You’ve got Natasha Romanoff and the Maximoff twins, right? Pietro has covered a couple of my shifts before. The twins are nice.”

Bucky chuckles. “They’re an acquired taste. If they like you, they really like you, but they definitely don’t like me. I can always hear them talking about me in Sokovian but Natasha won’t tell me what they’re saying.”

“Natasha is Sokovian too?”

“No, she’s Russian but she speaks like, 50 different languages,” he says. “She helped me translate my vintage copy of Proust I found at a garage sale.”

Bucky watches a smile twitch on Steve’s lips, hidden at the crease with some unspoken words. “You read Proust?” He sits up, pulling his legs back as he leans forward, elbows on the table. “I have built, deep in my heart, a chapel filled with you,” he murmurs quietly, and Bucky can feel his cheeks heating up as Steve watches him intently. His mouth feels dry as Steve looks amused, the shorter man saying, “Marcel Proust’s letter to Anatole France. _Selected Letters: 1880-1903_ is my favorite collection of his writing.”

“Did you just quote Proust at me? Are you _trying_ to make me fall in love with you, Steve Rogers?” he asks quietly, echoing the blond’s words from Mr. Kowalski’s shop.

Time seems to slow down as Steve blinks lazily and wets his bottom lip, tongue darting out to pull it under his teeth. “Depends,” he hums softly, low voice rumbling into Bucky’s ears. “Is it working?”

Marcel sets plates and glasses on the table and Bucky immediately grabs at his cup, chugging water quickly. He accidentally inhales a mouthful of water and thumps his chest once, coughing roughly into his arm. God, he was the smoothest person he knew and, yet, here he was, about to choke in front of one of his crushes.

“You okay?”

He coughs one more time and sputters, “Yeah. I’m fine.” He sighs and buries reddening face in his hands. “Sorry, I just... I just haven’t done this in a long time?”

Steve crinkles his nose and Bucky thinks he stopped breathing an hour ago. “Done what?”

“Gone on a date.”

“This is a date?” God, he doesn’t even want to look up at this point. He just wants to superglue his hands to his face so nobody has to see him turn the dark shade of crimson he knows he currently sporting right now. He could just sink into the table and it would be for the best. Bucky jumps when he feels a gentle hand on his arm and looks up to see Steve’s bright blue eyes trying to calm his anxious soul. “Hey, if it’s a date, it’s a date. Relax.”

He takes a deep breath and hands a fork over to Steve, mumbling, “Sorry about freaking out.”

The other man laughs hard, wheezing softly as he inhales, and grabs the fork. “Don’t worry about it. It’s cute.” Bucky watches him dig into the plate of curried goat and moan slightly, “Ugh, this is so good. You were right.”

He nudges his plate toward the blond and says, “You can have some of mine if you want.”

Steve grabs a bite of his oxtail and beans and gives him a look. “Damn it, this is way better than mine.”

“We can just split them both,” he says quietly.

They eat hungrily for a couple minutes, Bucky admiring how much food the smaller man can pack into his tiny body. Steve takes a deep drink of water and says, “Can I ask you something?”

“Only if I can ask you one too.”

“Fair deal. So, Bucky Barnes,” he starts, leaning against the table on one elbow, “how did you know my name? Were you asking about me at work?” Steve’s eyes are wary but curious, waiting for an explanation that Bucky doesn’t know is going to be exactly what he wants to hear.

“I saw your badge, you know, when I tripped on the steps. Then Maria had mentioned a ‘Steve’ on day shift, and I figured it must’ve been you,” he says, the white lie slipping out of his mouth before he can catch it.

“Oh. Okay.” And Bucky is mentally punching himself at the mildly disappointed words that come out of the other man’s mouth. He feels like he’s being torn in two, between Steve, here, right in front of him, and the person who only exists in the letters he needs like a drug and the words he thinks about at night when he touches himself. Bucky knows that everything in life has been building up to him getting these letters, eventually meeting this person, and he doesn’t know if he is brave enough to turn from his fated path.

But he still offers Steve a smile and asks, “So how did you get into nursing?”

The blond is quiet for a second before he looks down, staring at the rice on his plate. “I was _really_ sick as a kid. Like, homeschooled because I got sick so much that I was never in school. Gave me a lot of time to read, though. My mom was a nurse and she basically kept me alive until I was a teenager and had to learn how to do it myself after she got breast cancer.”

“That _sucks_.”

“Yeah, it sucked. She was diagnosed when I was 17; 40 years old with stage 4 metastatic cancer. She was feeling sick for a while but just wrote it off as being exhausted from being a single mom of a chronically sick teenager and working 50 hours a week at the hospital as a nurse,” Steve says quietly, not meeting his eyes. Bucky watches him blink quickly, anxiously pushing the hair out of his face. “I should’ve taken her to the hospital. I should’ve _made_ her go in.”

“Hey, _hey_ ,” Bucky says, reaching across the table to wrap his long fingers around Steve’s thin wrist. “That’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

“She died seven months after she got diagnosed, three weeks after my 18th birthday.” He pulls his hand out of Bucky’s grip and wipes his eyes quickly. “Figured the best thing I could do to honor her memory was go into nursing,” he says, forcing a smile.

“I think she’d be proud of you,” Bucky says, and he can see Steve’s smile relax into something more real.

_I have built, deep in my heart, a chapel filled with you._

Bucky tunes everything out around them and just watched Steve’s mouth curl around his words, time slowing again. He nods, taking in the small crinkles that spread from the corners of the shorter man’s eyes when he smiles, and he must be subconsciously understanding what he can’t hear because he answers, voice inaudible in his own head. Bucky doesn’t know know how much time has passed but he jolts out of his zone when Steve waves a hand in front of his face.

“Huh?” he asks, looking down at the empty plates, and he’s not sure when they finished eating.

“I asked if you wanted to get some dessert?” the blond asks. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Shaking his head, Bucky says, “No, I’m fine, but if you want something feel free. Like I said, it’s my treat.”

Steve smiles coyly and nudges Bucky’s ankle with his toe as he says, “Save your money. You can buy me a coffee with it next time.” He leans back, ever so slightly as the blond leans forward, pushing their plates to the side. The other man’s eyes are dark, intense, as he says, “So, Bucky, I have one more question I need answered.” His throat feels like sandpaper as he swallows, nodding numbly. “What’s a guy like me gotta do to get your number?”

“I’m kind of seeing someone.”

What the fuck is he _doing_?! Steve sits back quickly, letting out a short breath as he says, “Fine, okay.”

“I mean, I’m not like, _dating_ anyone but I’m emotionally invested in someone and I wouldn’t want to lead you on like that if you don’t have my full attention,” he babbles hopelessly, the stack of crimson letters burning in the back of his mind.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Steve says, voice tight as he gathers his books together. “Thanks for dinner. I’ll see you around.”

And he’s gone before Bucky can even protest. He throws $40 on the table and grabs his own books before racing out of the restaurant, heart pounding in his throat. But Steve is already long gone, having disappeared into the thick crowd of Friday night party goers.

“God _damn_ it,” he mutters, hanging his head.

His apartment feels suffocating when he gets home and Bucky ends up stress cleaning until almost 8am when he passes out, face down in his bed. He sleeps in late and picks up a torta from a cart, eating it on his way to work.

Natasha shoves a coffee in his hand the moment he steps in the break room. “Well, you look like shit tonight.”

“Couldn’t sleep today,” he grumbles, hands wrapping around the warm cup. “I went on a date yesterday and it went just about exactly how I thought it would, which is horrible in every sense of the word.”

“Like, a _date_ date? With an actual _person_?” Natasha asks incredulously.

“Stop it. It was with Steve, the short blond nurse from the morning shift. We ran into each other at the library and I took him to Mama T’s. It went really great until I massively fucked everything up. He asked for my number and I told him I was seeing someone.”

She smacks him upside the head, exclaiming, “What the hell is _wrong_ with you?!”

“I don’t _know_!” he says in desperation. “I thought of the letters and panicked. He looked so pissed and just left. It was _terrible_.”

Nat crosses her arms and gives him the patented Romanoff Look TM and Bucky just wants to sink into the floor. “You know, Barnes, you do a shit ton of stupid things in life, but choosing a random secret admirer over a dude who actually likes you, might just take the cake.”

He sighs and knows his friend is absolutely right, and he’s honestly even more ashamed of himself as is. He slips his tennis shoes off and opens the door to his locker to find an envelope sitting on his shoes. Not this again. Honestly, Bucky’s starting to wish that the envelopes would just stop and he could stop thinking about this person and prepare to die alone like he deserves.

 _The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea:_  
_what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?  
-S_

The words are sweet themselves but come out bitter and jealous, the pen digging into the bottom curve of every letter, a damp stain in the bottom left corner, wrinkled like a tear had curled its edge. It’s a Percy Shelley quote but, unlike the rest, this time it’s less longing, more possessive, and Bucky wonders if his admirer watched him with Steve last night.

Natasha looks up at him, for once, a worried expression clouding her face. “Bucky, I think this infatuation with the person sending you letters needs to stop. I don’t want you to be disappointed or, worse, end up hurt or dead. Something feels off about this.” She wraps her hand around his, the notecard crinkling in her palm. “I care about you and I _know_ that you’re in love with this-”

“I’m not in-”

“You _are_ and that’s what makes it dangerous.” She closes her eyes and lets out a small breath as she says, “You’re one of my only true friends. I couldn’t bear to lose you if something bad happened with this.”

He wraps his free arm around her and squeezes her tightly, muttering, “Aww, I didn’t know you cared so much, Romanoff.” She punches him in the kidney and he lets her go, coughing heavily. “Alright, alright, I won’t get all mushy on you,” he says, holding his hands up. “How about this, if I don’t find out who this person is by the end of next week, I’ll stop altogether.”

Nat jabs a finger in his face. “And you ask out the cute nurse from the day shift.”

“ _And_ I ask out Steve.”

“You better.”

When Natasha goes to change her shoes, he scribbles a quick line from the first book he ever read by himself, _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , and folds it into the vent.

_I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin’ after you.  
-B_

It’s a rough night in the ER after a two car pileup and a gun shot victim that, no matter how much blood they pull from the coolers, it’s not enough. They lose him at 2:12am and it never fucking gets easier.

He ends up having to change out of his first pair of scrubs and throws his first pair into the biohazard wash, hands still shaking from all the blood. Peggy looks at him worriedly when she finds him smoking a cigarette outside on his lunch break. He almost doesn’t see her, head buried in his hands as the smoke burns down to the filter.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” she says quietly, sitting down next to him on the bench.

He raises his head, eyes glassy, and says, “What do you think I’m trying to do?”

Peggy grabs the cigarette from his hand and pinches the lit end between her fingers, snuffing it out unaffectedly. “It’s already hard enough to find quality nurses around here and I will not waste precious time from my day hiring to replace you once you have lung cancer,” she says properly. When he just stares at the ground, the doctor sighs gently. “James, I know losing patients is always hard but-”

“He had four kids,” he interrupts, voice trying not to crack. “Four kids under the age of 7 and he wasn’t even involved in the gunfight, just an innocent bystander.” He looks at Peggy, the outline of her dark curls hazy through the tears in his eyes. “I fucking love my job but losing patients is the hardest part about it, even after five years of doing this. And you can call me a bad nurse all you want, but at least I’m not a hardened _bitch_ like you,” he snaps.

The older woman takes the insult unflinchingly, and says, “I was about to comment on the fact that your large heart makes you one of the best nurses in this hospital and that I’m proud to have you in my emergency department.” She stands up, smoothing her coat down, and checks her watch. “You have ten more minutes. Be sharp when you return.”

The rest of his shift feels like an out of body experience, like he’s going through the motions but his mind isn’t there.

Bucky cries himself to sleep with the stack of envelopes clutched in his hand.

He stays in bed his entire day off. He tries to shake himself out of the funk the past two days have poisoned him with. He’s about to just say ‘fuck it’ and starve to death in his bed when there’s a knock on his door. He throws a sweatshirt on and pads the ten feet across his apartment and answers the door. _Fuck_.

“It’s you.”

Steve offers him a thin smile and holds up the pizza box he’s holding. “Natasha called me and said you weren’t answering her texts. She was worried.”

“I’m fine,” Bucky grumbles. “I don’t need anyone checking up on me.”

He begins to shut the door when Steve sticks his elbow against the wood to stop him. “I’m sorry,” the shorter man says quietly. “I shouldn’t have just left like that. It was rude of me.” He holds up the pizza box again. “Paradise Pizza. Best in the borough. My treat.”

“Fine, come on in.” Bucky swings open the door to his 8’x12’ box of an apartment and Steve wanders in. “It’s a piece of shit, but it’s mine,” he says, clearing a spot on the coffee table.

“Hey, it’s a nice place,” Steve says, setting the box down. “I still live at our old apartment, but it’s rent controlled at least. My mom and my grandparents used to live there before I was born, so it’s got a lot of history. Had to rent out the other room for extra cash a couple years ago.” He takes the plate Bucky hands him. “Roommate’s cool at least. She worked with my mom in the hospital before she died. She’s a doctor now though.”

“I like having my own space,” Bucky says, grabbing a couple slices of pizza and sitting on his bed. “I’m the oldest of four, so I only had like, five years with my own space before the rug was pulled out underneath me.”

Steve laughs and is just about to sit down when he asks, “You got anything to drink? Beer? Wine?”

He’s not much of a drinker but he says, “I think there’s a bottle or two of cheap wine in the fridge.”

And so they sit, legs pulled up on his bed, eat pizza, and drink a little too much wine. At some point, Steve turns on a movie at some point, but Bucky’s too tipsy to remember what it is.

“This pizza _is_ good,” he says, words starting to slur together. “We should eat food together more often.” He knows that his cheeks are beginning to turn pink from the alcohol, they always do, and he knows he looks completely disheveled.

Steve finishes off his second glass and just smiles, the corners of his mouth twitching secretly. Bucky watches him chew on the inside of his flushed lips and it feels like he’s being studied with care and attention for the first time in his life. Like his soul is being pieced together after years of scattered moments.

He can feel a fire alight in the pit of his stomach, his head dizzy from the wine, as he croaks, “Steve?”

The way the blond wets his lips might just get him drunker than he is now as Steve whispers quietly, “Yeah?”

His hand sinks into the mattress as he leans in and god help him if Bucky doesn’t feel electricity running up his spine when Steve stops him, hand wrapping around his forearm. He meets the other man’s gaze, pupils blown, chest pounding. “I wanna kiss you.”

“Bucky... you’re seeing someone else,” Steve breathes shakily.

“I know.”

It seems to be the inevitable, the space between their bodies diminishing as he snakes his hand around the back of Steve’s neck, Bucky’s fingers spreading through the dark blond roots at the base of his scalp as he kisses the other man wantonly. He can feel Steve melt under his touch, arching up into his mouth, and all he can taste is the bitter remnants of wine on their tongues.

They fall back into his bed, the shorter man’s head sinking deep into his pillow as Bucky deepens the kiss, his other hand coming up to cup Steve’s jaw. A moan escapes between the two of them and he’s not exactly sure who it belongs to. The wine travels quick and he’s already half hard, his hips involuntarily hitching down.

“Fuck...” he breathes as a leg wedges itself between his, rolling his hips against it.

“Bucky... wait...” Steve pants into his mouth, his own erection straining against Bucky’s hip. His eyes slip closed as Bucky places sloppy down his neck, fumbling with the blond’s belt. “Each time you happen to me all over again,” he breathes, quiet over the rustling of fabric against skin, metal against leather.

Bucky pulls away from the spot he has laid claim to on the other man’s chest and glories in the words, kissing Steve deeply again. “ _Age of Innocence_. And you shall sit beside me, and we’ll look, not at visions, but at realities,” he quotes, his hand slipping down into Steve’s thin hips. Here they’ll find salvation. Here he’ll find restitution; be made whole again as their bodies fit together.

Steve wraps thin fingers around his wrist, stopping him from reaching the only place he cares about right now. He pulls himself out from the quiet place under Bucky’s body and sits up, chest heaving. “I can’t do this. I can’t be this person. I want you, but I want _all_ of you.”

“You _have_ me.” Bucky feels like he’s been burning, this flame on his chest unextinguished.

The blond shakes his head, his face flushed in embarrassment. “This person, the one you’re seeing, they don’t deserve this. I don’t want you to have to pick; I don’t want to have to be the second choice.” He sits back on his heels as Steve stands up, fumbling to buckle his belt.

It’s not a rushed, angry departure. It’s one sucked dry of the desire that used to drive them wild, Steve gathering his things slowly, quietly, head ducked to hide his red cheeks and the marks down his neck. And Bucky’s throat is filled with a thousand words he could say, but they’re all strangling him, letters burning once again in the back of his mind.

“I’m just going to go,” Steve murmurs, hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets, and all Bucky can do is nod.

He doesn’t call Natasha, doesn’t call Sam, doesn’t call his parents or his sisters, just stares at the letters from his first love on his table, face buried in his pillow as he inhales whatever is left of the other man he loves.

It doesn’t get any easier.

When Bucky gets to work the next night, Natasha lets him bury his face in her shoulder and cry in the supply closet for at least ten minutes, but who was counting. She pats his back gently, murmuring, “It’ll be okay.”

“I wish this never would have happened,” he says through his shuddering breaths, gulping for air as the tears flow easily. “For all I know, I’m going to lose them both.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation prize, you’ll be stuck with me til the day one of us kicks the bucket,” the redhead says, leaning her chin on the top of his head. “Everything will work itself out, I promise.”

On their way back to the break room, Peggy hands him a handkerchief from her pocket in sympathy. There’s another notecard in his locker and, god, he just wants to burn the damn thing in the sink.

His chest aches when he reads the words inside.

_In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.  
-S_

It take all the will he can muster up in his body not to crumple the card in his fist. It’s another Maya Angelou quote, one his mother used to repeat to him as a child, but it’s so melancholic right now that it just feels like a knife going in.

Bucky doesn’t know how much longer he can keep doing this, if he can keep doing this at all. He can’t live in a theoretical plane, he needs stability, something to be able to touch, not just words on a paper. So he decides right then and there to write one last note. One last hit and he’ll find sobriety again. He inscribes a Rumi quote on the Mama T’s check from his and Steve’s first dinner in his pocket and folds it quickly, shoving it in the usual space.

_Enough of words. Come to me without a sound.  
-B_

He blinks and it’s the end of his shift. He blinks and he’s in his bed, falling asleep to the early morning traffic. He blinks and he’s back at work. Time eaten by the anxiety coursing through his body. The day has come and gone and Bucky is starting to think the stress of his soul being split in two is starting to affect his health.

But today, there isn’t one, but two letters sitting carefully on top of his work shoes. He opens them hastily, paper tearing through the letters of his name so carefully curved into the paper. His soul, split in two; his name, split in two. Bucky reads the words on the first card carefully, committing them to memory.

 _In these dreams it's always you:_  
_the boy in the sweatshirt,_  
_the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge.  
-S_

He’s about to open the next one when he sees pen lines hastily scrawled across the back. He flips the card over to find a beautifully rendered Brooklyn bridge pen drawing on the card. On the pylon closest to Brooklyn, on the south side, there is a small red rectangle inked on the bricks. Another red envelope.

Bucky hesitantly opens the second envelope. He recognizes the words from an Emily Dickinson poem, but he can’t remember which one.

 _I will show you the sunset if you will sit by me,_  
_but I cannot bring it there, for so much gold is heavy.  
-S_

He flips it over to find the same inky stones held up by coiled pen marks, the red letter in the same place. But, this time, the sun is setting low behind the bridge, bathing the water below in grey beams. Sunset. It takes him a few minutes of googling to find out when the sun was going to begin to set the next day. 7pm. He has 24 hours before he can look upon the face of the person who has stolen his affection and the piece of his soul he had sworn to keep.

Natasha offers her services as personal bodyguard on their lunch break but Bucky reminds her of the throngs of tourists that flock to the bridge to see the sunset and she relents, just telling him to be careful. He can feel Peggy’s watchful eye on him the entirety of his shift but he tries to tune it out. He has things to look forward to.

Bucky rereads every single note in order, trying to piece together something, anything to give him something to expect. But there’s nothing. There never was.

He’s so anxious that a can barely sleep, only a couple hours during the early afternoon.

The wind in Brooklyn picks up around 5pm and it’s devastatingly cold outside, especially for the end of April, and Bucky has to bundle up with his wool coat and scarf as he makes his way to the bridge. The blocks pass by out of focus, like he can see the bridge and only the bridge as the sun begins to sink, full and heavy over Manhattan.

He checks his watch as the sun baths everything in gold, fighting to stay lit as he steps onto the wooden walkway. 6:58.

The boards creak under his feet and Bucky is hyper aware of everyone he passes, staring at each face to see if he recognizes anyone. He knows he must look crazy, stumbling through the crowd, wary of every person like he’s searching for a murderer. Quite the opposite, only the love of his life.

He reaches the pylon as the sun disappears, it’s orange and yellow watercolors still washed across the low hanging clouds. Bucky stares up at the inky masses and thinks it might rain.

When he looks back down, there’s a familiar red envelope taped to the bricks and was that there before? He lets out a shaky breath and tries to still his fingers as he rips the flap open and pulls out the card.

_Turn around.  
-S_

Every turn in his life, every step he’s ever taken has lead him to this exact spot, right at this moment. Fate is may be in our own hands, but destiny is something beyond ourselves, beyond our control, and has been predetermined from the moment we take our first breath.

So Bucky Barnes takes a deep breath and turns around.

“It’s _you_.”

A pair of familiar bright blue eyes stare up at him, the constellations aligning in the dark sky of his pupils.

“It’s _me_.”

Bucky can’t help but laugh. Laugh until his sides hurt, bent over on the side of the bridge, his cold hand muffling the sounds coming out of his mouth. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me?” he cackles, looking up at Steve’s mortified face. “It’s _you_?!”

The blond’s face heats up, cheeks turning red to match the wind burned tip of his nose. “I’m just going to go,” he says, visibly flustered.

He grabs the arm of Steve’s coat, pulling him back into his body. He grabs the shorter man’s face with both hands and kisses him shamelessly and deeply, unable to stop his smile. Steve looks a little dazed when he breaks the kiss and catches himself on the fence. Bucky laughs under his breath and says, “You know when I said I was emotionally invested in someone and that’s why I couldn’t give you my number?”

“Yeah, worst day of my _life_.”

He shoves the envelope into Steve chest and points to it. “ _This_ is what I meant. I was in love with the person writing me these letters at the same time I was falling in love with you, and you’re the _same goddamn person_ ,” he says, cracking up at how improbable the situation was.

Steve narrows his eyes, confused, and his hands clench around the letter. “Wait a second....”

“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs, heart caught in his throat for a new reason altogether. “It was you. It was always you.”

He manages to catch the shorter man as he all but throws his arms around Bucky’s neck, kissing him again. He wraps his arms tight around Steve’s waist and lifts him so their faces are finally level. Bucky knows that there are tourists watching them, lost in their embrace, but he only cares about Steve. He’s only _ever_ cared about Steve.

At some point, he remembers Steve groaning into his mouth, “My apartment’s closer,” as they stumble down the street, still kissing fervently. The shorter man shoves him into an old brownstone about 8 blocks from the hospital, a wild smirk plastered across his face. Bucky’s head cracks against the elevator door as they stumble backwards, Steve’s hands fumbling with his belt underneath his coat.

The doors opens and Bucky catches them, one hand grabbing the railing, the other in the small of the blond’s back.

His knees buckle when Steve finally works his hand into Bucky’s underwear, fingers curling around his hard cock. A moan slips out, muffled into the blond’s mouth, as Bucky breathes, “What floor?”

“Third,” Steve mumbles against the skin of his neck.

It takes a second for his hands to press the right button, but suddenly the elevator lurches upward, their bodies a tangled mess of limbs and lips against bodies.

They finally peel away from each other when they get to the end of the hallway, Steve digging in his pocket for his keys, chest heaving. Bucky’s cheeks are burning and he can feel the sweat running down the curve of his spine, but all he wants to do is peel all of his clothes off and replace them with Steve’s body.

He drops his coat and scarf on the ground and they fall into Steve’s bed, Bucky’s head cracking against the headboard. “Fuck,” he groans.

“You okay?” the blond laughs, already pulling off Bucky’s pants.

He nods, lifting his hips to let Steve pull his jeans down his legs, and kicks his boots off. They hit the ground with a thud as Steve sits up and strips his jacket and shirt off, his pale, thin body glowing from the streetlights outside. Bucky runs his thumbs over the sharp hipbones straddling him and says, “I can’t believe it’s you.”

Steve’s pupils are blown so wide that all he can see is pitch black replacing the sky blue. “I have built, deep in my heart, a chapel filled with you,” the blond repeats, more passionately, more urgently this time.

“You weren’t just _quoting_ Proust that night, were you?” he asks, propping himself on his elbows. He moans involuntarily when Steve grinds down on him, his head dropping forward.

“Everything that has been set before me, I have done not on my own accord. It has been birthed into me by a higher power,” Steve purrs, his hands sliding up Bucky’s shirt. “Providence flows through my veins like holy water, blessing everything I touch so that I may be made whole again.”

Bucky’s head drops back to the bed and he lays, gasping, “Who is that? Frost?” His eyes close and it feels like a stack of bricks on his chest. “Whitman? Plath?”

Steve looks up at him from the marks he’s been placing on Bucky’s sternum, saying, “Rogers.”

His hips snap up when the blond trails down, pulling Bucky’s underwear with him. Bucky can feel a fire alight deep in the pit of his stomach as Steve licks tentatively over the head of his cock, before sucking it deep into his mouth. “S-Steve... _fuck_... Jesus, your mouth,” he groans breathlessly, trying to keep his hips from thrusting too hard. But he loses control when he feels Steve hum, keening into the man’s hot wet mouth.

He pulls off to bite the soft, thin skin in the crook of Bucky’s thigh and Bucky is positive he can see straight through the roof into the stars above them. When Steve goes down on him again, Bucky can feel his dick hit the back of the blond’s throat and tries not to pass out.

Tangling his fingers in the blond hair, he pulls Steve up, growling, “C’mere.” Bucky kisses him sloppily, a bitter sting filling his mouth. He bites the other man’s lip and swallows his moan hungrily. At some point Steve presses a bottle of lube and a condom into his hands, but Bucky has other ideas.

He trails slick fingers into the back of the blond’s jeans, sliding one into Steve quickly. Bucky digs his free hand into the small of his back as Steve gasps out a raspy moan into his collarbone, his hips keening back into Bucky’s hand. “More,” he begs. “I just want you.”

And so he adds another digit, reveling in the shaky breathes he can capture from the other man’s mouth as Bucky slides his fingers in and out of his body. He wraps his free hand under Steve’s jaw, forcing him to look up, the blond’s face sunk in ecstasy, his thin hands still braced against his thighs. Bucky sinks his fingers deep, voice low as he says, “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” Steve inhales sharply and grinds against his leg. “I want to make you bloom.”

“You can’t just...“ He stops, letting out a guttural moan, chest rattling, when Bucky slides a third finger into his body. “Can’t just... _fuck_... quote Neruda and not fuck me now,” Steve breathes, words spilling from his mouth into Bucky’s waiting palm.

They fit together like the sky and the sea, meeting together at the horizon of Bucky sliding deep into Steve. His body shudders, waves rolling over him like a coming storm as the blond rocks himself slowly on his cock. It feels like the other man’s hands are made of coals as they drop to Bucky’s chest, burning through his skin and into his heart. His breath hitches and his hips snap up hard, the slap of skin against skin mixing with their shared moans.

Bucky’s eyes roll back as he hits something deep inside the pit of the blond’s soul, eliciting a low, sweet moan from Steve’s pink lips. His hips move faster as he wraps a hand around the other man’s flushed and aching cock as Bucky murmurs, “You are the one I am lit for.”

“Fuck... Bucky...” Steve breathes, his head dropping back and all he wants to do is sink his lips into the long, pale expanse of skin in front of him.

“Come with your rod that twists,” Bucky murmurs, thumbing over the leaking slit in his hand, “and is a serpent.” He can feel a tight burn in the base of his body and god help him if he wouldn’t spend an eternity doing this. And he knows Steve is close too, the other man losing rhythm as he hitches up and down quickly.

“I am the bush,” Steve groans, his voice raspy with fervor. Bucky’s stomach tightens and he knows the other man must know Lucille Clifford’s work by heart like he does. “I am _burning_. I am _not_ consumed.”

Bucky digs his other hand into the soft muscle of Steve’s ass, his first twisting sharply around the blond’s hard cock. He thrusts in deep and rocks the other man riotously against him, no space between their bodies. His legs start to shake when Steve leans forward to kiss him lustfully. “I love you,” Bucky gasps into the blond’s mouth, desperately trying to pull him closer. “Most ardently.”

And Steve becomes undone in his hands, coming hard, body shaking under his palms, and Bucky follows along quickly. His back arches and he’s unsure if he’s even in his body anymore. It feels more like Steve has pulled his soul out through his chest and thrown it into the heavens.

When his eyes finally roll back from out of his head, the flushed face above him finally comes back into focus. Steve’s face is covered in a soft sheen of sweat as he fumbles on the bedside table, chest rattling. Steve pulls the cap off his inhaler and inhales deeply, a grin on his face as he says, “I love you _so_ much.”

They clean themselves up and fall asleep, laced together like Bucky always knew they should be.

 _i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere_  
_i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling).  
-e.e. cummings_

Bucky sleeps through the night for the first time in years, eyes finally cracking open when the sunlight pours through the window. He yawns and rolls over, smiling at the stretched body fast asleep next to him. One of Steve’s arms is thrown above his head, face tucked into his bicep. Bucky touches his abdomen gently, feeling the skin twitch underneath him, but Steve stays fast asleep. He runs his fingers up the blond’s side, thumb lingering over his nipple.

Steve sighs deeply in his sleep, lips parting softly. His skin is still warm from sleep as Bucky wraps his lips around the other man’s chest. He chuckles, low in his throat when Steve stretches further, his nipple growing hard against Bucky’s tongue.

He trails soft kisses up to Steve’s collarbone, the stubble on his face scratching across the pale skin. He can already feel himself getting hard when he cups a hand over the low curve of Steve’s ass. The blond shifts again, inhaling shakily, as Bucky closes his lips around the thin skin covering pulsing vein in his neck. “Buck...” he moans softly.

“Mornin’,” he says, hitching his hand further under Steve’s hips. “You’re a deep sleeper.”

When the blond arches into him, Bucky can’t, and doesn’t want to, keep his hands off every inch of skin he’s allowed. Granted access to the thin pale blond hair on the inside of Steve’s thighs, the faded scar down the center of Steve’s sternum (from childhood heart surgery, Steve gasps into his ear), and the scattered freckles along his jaw. Bucky wants it all, wants to devour him so they never lose this feeling.

They fuck in the shower and it’s not a soft bloom of flowering bodies like they had turned into last night, but more a hammer against anvil, creating something from the shower of crashing of bodies together. His hands slip on Steve’s wet hips, fist in the damp strands of his hair, as steam rises around them.

And when Steve looks back at him, water streaming over his high cheekbones, a half dazed smile crossing his face like he’s drunk, Bucky just wants to tattoo the image into his brain so he never forgets it.

He catches himself on the soap dish, head spinning, when Steve drops to his knees in front of him, desirous as he begs, “Please tell me you love me.” Something short circuits deep in Bucky’s brain when he comes, adorning the blond’s flushed face with thick ribbons as he gasps Steve’s name. Bucky only wishes he had a crown of gold to place carefully atop his damp hair to complete the look.

And he still can’t get the image out of his head as Bucky watches Steve flip the pancakes on the stove.

“What’re you doing?”

Bucky blinks and doesn’t know when he stopped breathing. He pulls his gaze away from the bite mark still visible on the back of Steve’s shoulder, peeking out from the strap. “Hmm?” he murmurs quietly. “Was just thinking.”

Steve flips another pancake and finally turns to him, cheeks still rosy pink. “Thinking about me?” he asks, smiling when Bucky nods dumbly. “Good,” he says, crossing the kitchen to kiss him gently. “I want to be the only thing you think of for the rest of our lives. You, me, you thinking of me, me wrapped up in you. Forever.”

Bucky slides his hands into the blond’s waistband, his fingertips caught between rough denim and soft skin. “I can’t imagine anything else,” he breathes, settling into his new found home in between Steve and heaven.

He begins to kiss the other man’s neck but Steve wiggles out of his grasp, waving the spatula at him. “Unless you want burned pancakes,” he says, “you’ll have to wait til after food is done.”

Bucky barely makes it until then before he drags the younger man away from the kitchen and throws him down on the couch. Steve’s thin body spreads on the couch as Bucky fumbles with his jeans, pulling them down over his hips. “Come here, my boy,” he murmurs into the blond fuzz that trails down from Steve’s navel.

“What’re you doing?” Steve breathes as Bucky pulls his underwear down too, leaving the shorter man’s hardening cock exposed.

“Shut up and let me enjoy this,” he breathes, burying his nose deep in the warm crease in Steve’s thighs. His fingers dig into the other man’s thin hips as he wraps his lips around the soft skin of Steve’s balls, the scruff on his chin scratching against the blond’s thighs. Bucky can hear the other man let out a soft whine, hips shifting under his touch, and there’s nothing he’s wanted more, even before he knew he wanted it.

He nudges the base of Steve’s cock with his nose before running his tongue up the ridge on the bottom. Bucky can see the blond’s blue eyes watching him, pupils having devoured most of the blue and maybe he has an exhibitionist streak because he presses gentle kisses to the shorter man’s cock, breath catching at the way it jumps to attention every time he places his lips on the head.

“Jesus Christ, Buck...” Steve gasps, sinking back down into the couch, giving Bucky unrestricted access to his body.

Bucky pulls one of the other man’s legs out of his jeans and wastes no time in licking down to Steve’s hole, wrapping an arm across the blond’s thin waist to keep him from moving. He relishes in the way he can still smell the apricot body wash from the shower earlier as he presses his tongue over and over against Steve’s ass, letting the skin open underneath his mouth. He could do this for hours, for days, for years until his body gave out on him, his mouth still buried into this gorgeous body.

He can hear Steve let out tiny little moans as Bucky runs his fingers lightly down where his tongue sits, mind going numb as the skin puckers again under his fingerprints. “God, you’re fucking incredible,” he growls, all poetry and romantic words thrown out the window. This was just him and Steve and his fingers dying to be inside. Bucky sucks on his fingers until they’re as dripping wet as Steve’s ass is and runs them over the blond’s hole. “Think you can take two already?” Bucky asks, trying not to lose his head as he presses them gently.

Steve lets out a broken moan, hips straining against Bucky’s arm as his head rolls back. “I took your... fuck... took your cock this morning...” he says, breathing hard and uneven as Bucky works a single finger in. “Took your tongue... and you still have the... _shit_... the nerve to ask...”

That’s all the answer he needs.

Bucky sinks his fingers into Steve, pushing through the resistance, and dives up to capture the loud moan the younger man gifts into his mouth.

There’s something unholy about the way Steve’s body feels around his fingers, so different than their first night together. Like his pleasure is all Bucky could fucking care about. His own cock is only half hard, all the blood rushing up to his head. He’s so dizzy as he memorizes the way the shorter man clenches down around his knuckles, the way his insides feel, the hard press of Steve’s cock against Bucky’s arm.

“Just want you to feel so good,” he drawls, kissing his way back down the pale skin. Bucky curls his fingers deep inside Steve and smirks around his navel when he lets out a choked groan. Got it.

He licks back over the head of the blond’s cock before taking it in his mouth fully, fingers curling back into just the right angle. Bucky bobs his head, tongue dragging, and just eats up the way Steve’s long thin fingers dig into his hair. He lets the younger man thrust a little too hard, a little too fast, and is loving the burn that comes with the slight gag as the cock sinks further down Bucky’s throat.

“Shit, I think...”

Bucky pauses when he hears a pair of heels outside the door and the rustling of a hand in a purse.

He pulls away, lips swollen and wet, and begins to panic, asking, “Who the fuck is that?”

Steve shoves him out of the warm space between his legs and shoves his leg back in his jeans, buttoning his pants quickly. “Shit, it’s my roommate. She said she was working a double today!”

Bucky wipes his chin with the back of his hand and his hand on his leg, adjusting his jeans to try and hide his erection as he hears the lock click. The door swings open and he’s pretty sure he’s going to absolutely die of embarrassment.

“Oh! Hello,  _James_ ,” Peggy says, setting down her purse on the table next to the door. She turns to Steve and smiles, almost smugly. “And _you_ didn’t believe that my plan would work.”

“Your _what_?” he exclaims, his head snapping to face the blushing blond. “Was this seriously her plan the whole time?” Bucky looks between the two of them and narrows his eyes at the doctor. “And I bet you wrote the fucking notes, didn’t you!”

“ _Very_ perceptive, James,” she says, her lipstick curling into a small smirk.

“I knew my handwriting would give me away,” Steve says, almost shyly. “Peggy had told me so much about you, so I knew she would help me get your attention. And I have to admit, her idea of using the notes worked.”

Bucky’s face turns ten shades of crimson as he drops his face into his knees. “Oh my god,” he says, voice muffled in his jeans. “This is literally my worst nightmare.”

“Oh stop it,” Peggy says, hands on her hips. “James, you act like I have terrible things to say about you. Quite the contrary, I knew you and dear Steven over here would be quite the amiable match and, as per usual, I was correct. Both smart, sensitive, well read, and dashingly handsome.”

Steve laughs and Bucky can feel his hand on the small of his back. “Okay Pegs, enough gloating. Go get your beauty sleep.”

“My sweet Steven, don’t act like I need sleep to look this impeccable,” she says with a flip of her long dark curls. She heads down the hall to her room but stops, calling out, “Please do mind the couch!” and Bucky turns even darker red.

The door shuts and he can hear Steve laughing quietly. When he sits up, he glares at the blond embarrassedly, snapping, “You’re a fucking asshole, Steve Rogers.”

Steve grabs his face and kisses him soundly, climbing into his lap, thighs bracketing Bucky’s hips. “You can’t be mad at me,” the shorter man hums, grinding down on him. “Not after the performance you just gave me.” Bucky hates his body for giving in, his cock hardening in his jeans again. Even when he’s half mad at Steve, this boy drives him crazier than anyone he’s ever met.

“Ugh,” he relents, palming the blond’s dick through his jeans. Steve’s chin drops down to his chest and he lets out a shaky breath, hips rocking slowly. “Payback’s a bitch, huh Rogers?”

“Lets take this back to my room,” Steve breathes as Bucky’s hands fumble with the button on his pants again. “Peggy may say she’s... fuck... she’s joking, but I think if we got anything more than spit on the couch, she’d smother me in my sleep.”

Back in the haven of Steve’s room, Bucky finishes what he started. He twists his fingers, slick with lube, deep inside the blond as he sucks him off slowly. Pressing his fingers firmly against Steve’s prostate, Bucky can feel a mix of spit and precum drip down his chin. He knows the blond is so fucking close, with the way Steve fists both hands in his hair, fucking his face without abandon.

His throat aches and he moans around the dick in his mouth when the shorter man inadvertently runs an ankle over Bucky’s erection. “Holy ah-sh-shit,” Steve stutters, hips shaking around his fingers. “Let me come in your p-pretty mouth...”

Another few thrusts of Bucky’s fingers and the blond comes hard, back arching as he thrusts a little too far down Bucky’s throat. Steve clenches down around his fingers, body trembling as Bucky swallows around him. He can hear the small wheeze in the breath the shorter man takes in and can’t help but chuckle when he pulls off, lips red and shiny. “You okay there?” Bucky asks with a smirk.

Steve drops back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling as he wheezes quietly. “Inhaler...” he croaks.

Bucky digs in the bedside drawer and hands it to him, wiping his mouth with the neck of his shirt as Steve takes a couple deep puffs. “You going to have an asthma attack every time I fuck you senseless?” he asks, shucking his shirt off and crawling up the bed. Steve makes a small grunt as Bucky buries his face in his pale thin neck. “We should probably get some sleep...”

“S’morning though,” Steve breathe slowly, his hand finding Bucky’s as he laces their fingers together.

“Not everyone has the luxury of being on day shift,” he says, curling around the younger man. He pulls their intertwined hands up and kisses them gently. “Gonna miss you when I go back to work tonight,” Bucky admits tiredly, even if the thought pinches his chest tight. “Promise me we’ll find a way to make this work. I don’t want to lose you.”

It’s quiet and Bucky closes his eyes, trying to block out the urge to look up at Steve’s face, to read what he’s thinking, in case it doesn’t line up to what he wants. Even if they didn’t have forever, they would still have this moment of time and space perfectly aligned to bring them together. Something to remember each other by when their schedules and lives drifted too far apart for them to fix.

“Bucky?” Steve mutters and he sounds as exhausted as Bucky feels. “Is there still that position open on night shift now that Christine left?”

“Mhmm, she got some fancy new clinic opening in Manhattan. Why?”

Their fingers tighten as Steve grips him close to his chest and murmurs, “I’m thinking about transferring to graveyard. Be with you more. Be with you here and there, I mean, if that’s something you want.”

Bucky places a tired kiss in the hollow of the blond’s collarbone and squeezes his hand back. He can almost feel the grin radiating from above him, and he knows that it’s the only answer Steve needs. All the notes and poetry and words wouldn’t make a difference if it wasn’t them together forever and always.

His lips press against skin again and Bucky whispers, sleep blurring the edges of Neruda’s word, “My love feeds on your love, beloved. And as long as you live, it will be in your arms without leaving mine.”

He can hear Steve sigh, soft and steady against him, and knows that this is what all those poets and prophets and kings dreamed of.

A love that pulls like no other.

And there’s no other place he would rather be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed nurse!verse :)


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